If a team of Martian explorers landed in California, they would likely report back to their leaders that the state is ruled by a few powerful fish species, and that humans have been forced into involuntary servitude to support them.

What else could a reasonable Martian think? Humans paid billions of dollars over decades to construct water infrastructure capable of irrigating crops and sustaining cities that are hundreds of miles away from rainfall, then throttled the whole system to protect fish.

Side-by-side on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta are the federal Central Valley Project, built in the 1930s, and the State Water Project, built in the 1960s. But then in the 1970s, the laws of the land were changed, effectively subordinating the needs of humans to optimize fish mating.

Lawsuits were the first thing spawned by the state and federal Endangered Species Acts. They gave birth to legal settlements and new laws to protect our aquatic monarchy.

Since the 1980s, the volume of water pumped south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has been cut in half, even as the state’s population has grown. Humans have suffered with decimated crops and astronomical water bills.

Elected officials announced endless new mandates for further conservation, and when that wasn’t enough, they started talking about gutters and toilets as a source of “local water.” Then they imposed further rate hikes and taxes to pay for the clean-up. The particular protected fish populations, meanwhile, have been in decline despite the effort.

This is the context for an emerging coalition in California that is rising from the rubble of the 2018 election. An agreement is in the works between the Trump administration, newly-reelected Sen. Dianne Feinstein, soon-to-be House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and outgoing Governor Jerry Brown.

Their plan calls for extending an expiring 2016 law, which was signed by President Barack Obama as a drought emergency measure. The Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act gave federal authorities flexibility in operating the Central Valley Project pumps. The proposed seven-year extension would enable continued and probably increased pumping of water from the Delta to support Central Valley agriculture.

Or, to use the language preferred by environmental justice groups, conservation organizations and fishing interests that oppose the extension, it would allow agri-business to steal water from fish nurseries.

President Trump signed an executive memorandum directing the Interior and Commerce Departments to “do what it takes to ensure that western water users have what they need to irrigate millions of acres of farmland and provide water and power to millions of Americans.” Then the Interior and Commerce secretaries signed a Memorandum of Agreement to implement water delivery in the west “as quickly and smoothly as possible.”

And then, smooth as glass, Feinstein and McCarthy made a deal and persuaded Brown to support it.

The deal isn’t law yet. The plan is to add the WIIN extension to the year-end spending bill. That vote is expected just before Christmas. But don’t bet against the fish. The State Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to meet on December 12 to vote on a proposed plan that would restrict even further the amount of water that’s allowed to be pumped south.

And Brown may have his own plan to secure federal assistance for another one of his legacy projects, the twin-tunnel WaterFix, now estimated to cost a pile of dollars that if laid out end-to-end would easily reach Mars.

Taxpayers should be particularly wary of the WaterFix project. The cost of building it will be added to water bills, and on top of that there’s a risk that state water contractors — the wholesalers who deliver water to the local water agency that sends you the water bill — will raise local property taxes to cover WaterFix cost overruns.

Did you know that water contractors can raise your property taxes? They’re required by the state water contract to raise property taxes if they can’t pay their obligations to the state any other way. In fact, there’s still a charge on property tax bills for building the State Water Project, even though it was completed in the 1960s.